New York|New York’s LED Streetlights: A Crime Deterrent to Some, a Nuisance to Others

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New York’s LED Streetlights: A Crime Deterrent to Some, a Nuisance to Others

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A bocce game at William F. Moore Park in Queens. Residents in the area think the park is especially busy this summer because the city has switched over to LED streetlights.CreditCreditSam Hodgson for The New York Times

As dozens of families and friends crowded into William F. Moore Park in Queens on a sweltering night last week, it was hard to tell what was louder: the cries of children who would not share their Italian ices from the Lemon Ice King of Corona, or the crash of bocce balls on the park’s floodlit court.

Thump-thump-thump-thump CRACK!

“Es rosa, es rosa!”

“No, no, no, es green, es green!”

There may have been little agreement on whose balls were closer to scoring, but everyone seemed to agree that the park was especially busy this summer — and many agreed on why.

“It used to be quieter, scarier, before they changed the lights,” Reuben Mendoza, who moved here from Mexico 19 years ago, said during a break.

In May 2015, New York City’s Department of Transportation came to the Queens neighborhoods of Corona, Elmhurst and Jackson Heights to start replacing the old “cobra head” lights on major thoroughfares with new fixtures housing light-emitting diodes, better known as LEDs. The light switch was proposed last decade, and will eventually encompass all 250,000 streetlights in the city’s five boroughs.

The city undertook the changeover less to eliminate the jack-o’-lantern glow of the old high-pressure sodium lights and more for the benefits of LEDs. They are not only more efficient, but they also have a 15-year life span, which means less maintenance. The city expects to save $6 million per year on energy and $8 million a year on repairs.

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An LED streetlight in Queens. The new lights are expected to save the city $14 million a year.CreditSam Hodgson for The New York Times

But the truer hues of the LEDs, which appear much brighter to the naked eye than the old lights, have other benefits.

“I used to be afraid to go out at night with my kids,” said Stephanie Arias, who was sharing a park bench with her husband and two sons as they licked ices. “There are a lot of stupid little guys around who like to start stuff. Now it’s different.”

Yet where some now see better, others see only a nuisance. Residents of Corona may have embraced the LEDs as a crime deterrent and a pedestrian safeguard, but those in more upscale neighborhoods are fighting them. Many have argued that the lights’ rays blast through windows and ruin the charm of the night.

From Windsor Terrace in Brooklyn to the West Village in Manhattan and Flushing in Queens, hundreds of grievances have flooded into official inboxes and switchboards as residents complain that the LEDs are harsh and hideous. Some say they cannot sleep at night. On Brian Lehrer’s radio show in May, Mayor Bill de Blasio promised to send out crews to turn down the lights where they present problems. “Once again, the citizens know best,” the mayor, a Democrat, said. “They were too bright in many cases, initially.”

In underserved neighborhoods like Corona, though, “too bright” is exactly what residents want.

“I haven’t gotten a single complaint,” said Councilwoman Julissa Ferreras-Copeland, a Queens Democrat. She had to spend $500,000 from her capital budget for the new LED lights on Roosevelt Avenue, which run beneath the elevated No. 7 train from 90th to 111th Street. She used to live on the avenue and knows how scary it can be, especially when the subway comes roaring overhead.

“We can’t dim the entire city and have some places back in the dark again,” Ms. Ferreras-Copeland said. “We’re out of the shadows and we don’t want to go back.”

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Stephanie Arias, with her family, said the new park lighting made her feel safer, although the lights on her block have not been converted.CreditSam Hodgson for The New York Times

That might just happen. The City Council is considering a bill to lower the color temperature on the LED fixtures. This would reduce glare but also, perhaps, clarity. And after the Department of Transportation received 150 complaints last year, it began installing lower-powered lights: 72 watts compared with 78 watts.

The differences are stark, even within a few miles.

Last October, the author Lionel Shriver deplored the arrival of the lights in Windsor Terrace in an op-ed in The New York Times: “As currently conceived, the D.O.T.’s streetlight plan amounts to mass civic vandalism.”

Representatives for three Brooklyn community boards east of Prospect Park, covering Crown Heights, Flatbush and Brownsville, said that the new lights have been warmly welcomed with no complaints.

Councilwoman Helen Rosenthal, a Democrat who represents the Upper West Side, helped get a set of new LEDs on 86th Street switched off because they were beaming into residents’ windows. She said, however, that she also sympathizes with those communities clamoring for LEDs.

“It’s a good question, why, historically, has a district like mine and the Upper East Side been well-lit while others have not?” Ms. Rosenthal said.

But many areas like the South Bronx and Upper Manhattan, communities that would presumably like to have the LEDs, will be last to get them.

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Vincent Barbaccia, a co-owner of the Lemon Ice King of Corona, in Queens, said he preferred the brighter streetlights.CreditSam Hodgson for The New York Times

Installation has focused on areas like brownstone Brooklyn and stretches of Manhattan, including Central Park, and all 22,000 lights on the city’s highways, which were replaced in 2014. Brooklyn has received 95 percent of its roughly 61,000 new lights, compared with barely a third of Queens’ 81,000 streetlights. There are thousands in Manhattan but almost none in the Bronx or on Staten Island, excluding the highways. A Transportation Department spokesman said this was simply a result of old contracting patterns. The lights have been installed at 1,000 dangerous intersections citywide as part of the mayor’s Vision Zero program.

“Converting to LED street lighting is a big change for New York City, but has been embraced by most communities,” Polly Trottenberg, the city’s transportation commissioner, said in a statement. “We have already found ways to reduce the brightness where needed, and D.O.T. is continuing to consider technological advances that will improve the character of LED lighting, making it more visually attractive.”

Research differs on whether better lighting leads to a reduction in crime, though a 2007 meta-analysis of 13 cities around the world, including eight in the United States, showed an overall reduction. “I believe in New York, you would expect to see a positive result,” said Brandon Welsh, a professor of criminology at Northeastern University who helped lead the analysis.

“It’s actually less of a surveillance function,” he added, “than people take pride and ownership of their community, so they can watch out for one another and police it themselves.”

Ms. Ferreras-Copeland said the local police precincts had told her office that crime had decreased on the better-lit streets. But in an email, a Police Department spokesman said: “There is no correlation between bright streetlights and lower crime rates. Police officers cannot speculate on hypothetical theories.”

For Vincent Barbaccia, a co-owner of the Lemon Ice King for the past 13 years, there is nothing hypothetical about the lights. His stand used to be the only bright spot on the block, until last summer. “I had to tell them twice to turn the lights off” inside the shop, he said, “because I thought they were still on.”

Many drivers — or those on two wheels — said they welcomed the improved illumination, too.

“It’s light, and more light is good,” Angel Delvillan said while atop his bike on 108th Street. “Are people really complaining? Don’t they have real things to worry about?”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A17 of the New York edition with the headline: LED Streetlights: Comfort or Nuisance? Depends on the Neighborhood. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe